Ready-made WinPE ISOs (from Gandalf)

If you are looking for ready-made WinPE ISOs (with UEFI-boot support too), check out the Gandalf's WinPE builds of WinPESE8.1 (Google for 'Gandalf WinPE').

Win8.1U1SE_x86 updateable (UEFI+MBR bootable) - This PE had external Portable Apps and Programs folder, allowing you to add more programs.

There is even a dual-boot x86/x64 ISO (64-bit UEFI + 32&64-bit MBR booting)...

The dual-PE ISO has an external Portable Apps folder, so you could add more apps into it.

As these are WinBuilder ISOs, you either need to mess about with INI files, etc. (see previous blog) OR just drag-and-drop the ISO onto the MPI_FAT32 Desktop shortcut to make a .imgPTN file.

The advantages of using a .imgPTN file is that it is easy to make and it will support UEFI-booting too. In addition, if you make the size of the .imgPTN file larger than is needed, you could add more portable apps to the CSM-mode partition (but don't try to install any or add them to the Desktop because WinPE runs from a RAM drive (X:) and so they won't be there on the next boot!).

• You can change the file extension to .imgPTNAUTO and it will go straight to the CSM menu without any user prompt about changing partitions.
• You can use 'set AUTOCSM=1' in the \_ISO\MyE2B.cfg file to make all .imgPTN* files go straight to the CSM menu without a user prompt.
• If you use the file extension .imgPTNLBA23,  then if your E2B HDD drive has a 2nd partition, it will also be accessible from WinPE. You can thus store a range of portable apps on the 2nd E2B partition and they will be accessible by all of your .imgPTN payloads.

This .imgPTN file was made using MPI Tool Kit v0.051 and so has 32-bit Clover UEFI-boot support.

P.S. Not sure that it is legal for 'Gandalf' to provide these Microsoft OS downloads, so get them while you can!

Note: In some cases, you may need to increase the suggested size recommended by MPI by approx 300MB as the .ISO file may be highly compressed.


Change Region\TimeZone

From here:

For anyone else looking at localising their copy to their region/keyboard/timezone etc here’s the code sequence I’ve used to convert to GB specific settings: –

[For my needs there was no advantage of adding in a specific additional language pack, but others may need to do this.]

…. boot.wim has been copied to a directory C:\WinPE\
…. an empty mount folder here has also been created called ‘mount’

Dism /Get-Imageinfo /Imagefile:boot.wim

Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:”C:\WinPE\boot.wim” /index:1 /MountDir:”C:\WinPE\mount”

Dism /Image:”C:\WinPE\mount” /Get-Intl

Default system UI language : en-US
System locale : en-US
Default time zone : Pacific Standard Time
User locale for default user : en-US
Location : United States (GEOID = 244)
Active keyboard(s) : 0409:00000409, 0c0c:00011009
Keyboard layered driver : PC/AT Enhanced Keyboard (101/102-Key)

Installed language(s): en-US
Type : Fully localized language.

The operation completed successfully.

Dism /Image:”C:\WinPE\mount” /Set-InputLocale:en-gb
Dism /Image:”C:\WinPE\mount” /Set-UserLocale=en-gb
Dism /Image:”C:\WinPE\mount” /Set-SysLocale=en-gb
Dism /Image:”C:\WinPE\mount” /Set-timezone=”GMT Standard Time”

C:\WinPE>Dism /Image:”C:\WinPE\mount” /Get-Intl

Default system UI language : en-US
System locale : en-GB
Default time zone : GMT Standard Time
User locale for default user : en-GB
Location : United Kingdom (GEOID = 242)
Active keyboard(s) : 0809:00000809
Keyboard layered driver : PC/AT Enhanced Keyboard (101/102-Key)

Installed language(s): en-US
Type : Fully localized language.

The operation completed successfully.

Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:”C:\WinPE\mount” /commit